Losing faith in the early success of her work led Miseon Lee on a journey of self-discovery, both in artistic terms and geographically, writes James Hanley
Miseon Lee is a 52-year-old South Korean artist based in Limerick city who has been noted of late for her beautifully painted, classically poised self-portraits. But the story of how these works were arrived at and how she arrived to these shores is a moving and complex tale that is as inspirational as her work.
After seven years studying art in Seoul, culminating in a masters, Miseon was set for a career in painting. As an undergraduate, her studies were rigorously from life and she opted for Western painting, theory and techniques, as opposed to pursuing a native Oriental style of working, predominantly with inks and paint on rice paper. On graduation, her work had become expressive, not necessarily a deliberate fashion-conscious move to connect with the Zeitgeist of the mid 1980s, but more a natural evolution of her own practice.
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